More than ten years
in the job and I’d never called in sick. Not once. But last
week I did. It felt utterly exhilarating to lie like that,
knowing that I wasn’t sick in the slightest. Well, I’m sick of
lots of things, but nothing they would happily give me a
day off for. Terrific is what I wanted Judy to shout out. I
wanted her to jump slightly, guffaw and clap at the same time,
like she used to do when something really tickled her. But
no, she just shuffled on down the hallway and turned off all the
lights that I now forget to extinguish on purpose. At least
she didn’t slap me, which has become something of a
regular occurrence. I think she has come to realise that I
would never slap her back.

I actually didn’t tell her what I was
planning, but I thought she might guess
in the end. Strangely, I even wondered if she might offer
to accompany me down the coast, and not give me excuses
about migraines, or television shows she couldn’t miss, or
how she had to take some important call from her family. I’d
left the clipping from the paper on the table with a circle
around the name: Doctor P.B. Waverly. I thought she might remember
the stories she used to love to listen to.

I bought flowers to take with me, but a lot
of good that was. I saw later in
the death notice that some miserable person had
requested that no flowers be offered. A donation to a charity? But it’s
him I wanted to honour, to buy something nice for, to have
something colourful and sweet-smelling to place on his
coffin. Posting off a cheque to some charity was just simply not the
same.

I remembered enthralling Judy with my
tales of mowing the lawns for Waverly,
when I was not even 15, with nowhere near enough muscle on my
arms to push a machine that looked more like a steamroller.
He refused to discuss a price when I first knocked on his door
and enquired about a job. He said he would pay from one
weekend to the next, whatever I thought to be the fair price for a
particular day’s work, implying that some days I would
slacken off and others I would be keen and sprightly. Sometimes
I asked for five quid, when the grass was low; other days,
when it seemed like a jungle, I boldly asked for 10, way above
what the other lads in the neighbourhood were getting. But he
always paid, never questioning my price. Once I pushed him
up to 20 quid when the grass was extra long and damp and he’d
left it weeks before calling me up. Sometimes I fibbed
and demanded more than I merited, especially when some
new vinyl just couldn’t be ignored.

Several times, while felling the grass, I caught
sight of him in one of the
upstairs windows, naked and having stand-up sex with someone
who was not his wife. I suspected he deliberately came
close to the window, knowing that I might be watching, as if he
were proud to be showing me how a man should be with a
woman. Once he pushed a lady’s buttocks so forcefully up against
the glass that I feared they might come smashing through.

Other times I saw him dancing up there
with his dog, holding her up by her
front paws and really seriously dancing, like with a woman,
bringing her close to him, spinning her around. The dog,
named Sally, had enormous patience for her master; another dog
would’ve bitten off his nose. That was the kind of dog I was
always going to have, with its long, fluffy fur and a wet kiss
on the cheeks for anyone who wanted it. I even started saving
up my pocket money when I was told that a puppy like that didn’t
come cheap. Suffice to say that my Judy refers to dogs of
any nature as stinking mongrels.

Our Doctor Waverly was a maverick, to
borrow a word from my father. In fact,
my parents asked me more than once whether it was such a good
idea to be working for a man who had such a strange reputation
in the town. There was no way, of course, that I was going to
forfeit my weekly bundle of notes because of some nasty country
gossip. I lied and rigorously defended Waverly, telling my
father that I had never seen anything out of the ordinary.
No, it was malicious to suggest that he took young nurses home
from the hospital when his wife was away delivering meals to
the elderly. And I swore that I’d never seen him dancing
the polka with his collie.

Young Simon, he said to me one Saturday (I
never understood why he
thought an adjective was always necessary before my name), what
if I pay you not to mow the lawns?

Not
to mow them?

Well, who jolly well said that grass
always has to be cut down to nothing?

But it’ll be messy, I offered, without
even really thinking about it.

Nonsense. You’re just saying that because
that’s what you’ve heard, what
you’ve learnt, what you’ve been programmed to think. Don’t you
love long grass? Jumping in and rolling around in it?
Losing yourself in it? Taking a girl into it and making her giddy?

But everyone mows the lawns.

Which is exactly why we shouldn’t do it!

But I’ve been mowing yours for months. You
asked me to.

I did nothing of the sort, dear boy. You
asked me for the job. But I now ask
you this: does it look good to you, so clipped back to the
dirt and without any shape? I’d hoped you might see for
yourself how bad it looks. It’s nothing but conformism (which I
had to look up at home later).

I looked out over the lawn but couldn’t
think straight.

Let’s just let it grow back now, right up
towards the sun where it’s supposed
to be.

So I’m out of a job?

Rubbish. I’m going to pay you to make sure
that nothing gets lost in it,
that the blades come up free of constraint. You will also pull
out all of those other jealous weeds that might attack on a
side wind.

Jealous weeds? I did wonder (following
Waverly’s own logic) why the
grass had more of a right over the weeds to reach up towards
the sun. But I just didn’t have the nerve to say it, not when he
was so fired up and talking so fast.

You can also help me create a maze that
runs through it, he said. What fun
we’ll all have when it’s finished.

I pictured myself with one of the nurses,
being encouraged to strip
off our clothes and run through into the densest part of the
jungle. If only.

In the weeks that followed he paid me
exactly what I asked for. I pulled
out weeds that didn’t match the bright blades that grew
higher and higher, and I chucked out lost balls and litter
that swept in from the road – or the things that furious
neighbours tossed over their fences because they couldn’t believe
that someone would leave their front lawn so out of control. I
gave up trying to explain to my parents the change in my
working schedule.

Those memories made me stand and look out
over what remains of the
garden I created with Judy. What a pity we left everything go to seed
and the grass to become so thin. We’ve gone so crazy on
the mowing that the ground looks like it’s been chopped up by
a plough. No garden, no passion, my gran would always say.

Judy stood over me with a cigarette as I
polished my shoes. She blew smoke
into my face.

So you’re taking a day off, she said. Getting
all dressed up in a suit,
driving for five hours and buying expensive roses for some old geezer
you used to mow the lawns for?

Exactly.

Was this your father then, Simon? Is that
it? You mowed lawns for this old
guy and he turned out to be your real biological father?

You
need a coffee, Judy.

I’ve had three already, but I’m still
bored.

She pushed me gently to make me fall
forward. My hand landed in the black
tub of polish.

So I take it you’re not coming, my sweet?

Not unless you tell me it’s your long lost
father. Or how about someone
related even? Or at least someone we’ve had contact with over
the past 20 years? Jeez.

I’ll see you on Friday then.

So how did he die this psychiatrist?

Our eyes locked.

He
killed himself.

He what? Psychiatrists aren’t supposed to top
themselves.

It was true. The thought hadn’t crossed my
mind. Just as we don’t ever expect
a dentist to have rotting teeth, or a plumber to have to
clean up after the eruption of their own blocked toilet. A
psychiatrist is supposed to be the happy, rational one, who
talks others out of such a terrible plan. They are the ones who
know how to get others to grin and bear it and pretend
everything is okay. How could they then turn around and chuck it
all in?

Judy gave me a look of disgust. And you
want to pay tribute to this guy,
who couldn’t even practise what he preached?

Who on
earth practises what they preach?

She didn’t say goodbye or wish me well
when I headed off.

You’ll be lucky if I’m here when you get
back, she said.

She didn’t mean it, of course. She always
said that whenever I left the
house.

I phoned her later from the motorway. Why
didn’t you ask to come then?

Same reason you didn’t invite me.

Don’t you remember me talking about him?
All those things he used to get me
thinking about? He was a genius. I miss him.

Yeah, so I gather.

I asked her if she remembered the thing
about why we wash our face in the
morning, and I could swear I almost heard her laugh.

No.

He drove me crazy with his seemingly easy
questions that got me so worked up.

I told Judy not to hang up just yet. So why
do you still wash your face when
you get up in the morning, even if you’ve had a shower the
night before?

You’re going to go weird on me. I can hear
it in your voice.

It’s just a question.

You’ll lose your job and then we’ll be in
the shit.

Heavens. It’s just a question about
washing your face in the morning.

There was silence. Then she sighed. I
don’t know.

That’s how I responded all those years ago
to Doctor Waverly. Sometimes
it was best to play dumb with him, especially when
football practice was not far away.

But it doesn’t get all dirty when you
sleep, does it?

Another silence. It wakes me up. The
answers were coming painfully.

Does it? But you’re already awake when
you’re standing at the sink.

No, but it wakes me up some more.

Does it really?

I think so.

Maybe you just do it out of habit. You’re
programmed to do it.

It makes me feel better. Can I go now?

Habits often do make us feel better. But I
bet you feel just the same after
waking, whether you splash water over your face or not. You would
become more alert anyway, and the washing of the face
has nothing to do with it.

It gets the sleep out of my eyes.

I laughed. You don’t need water for that.
In fact, it’s better when the
sleep stays dry, so it can be wiped out more easily.

But she had already hung up. Just as well,
I suppose, as I know it’s not
good to phone and drive.

The same question had my young self in
knots for weeks. I asked everyone for
their opinion, and no one really gave a convincing answer.
Doctor Waverly was brilliant. I stopped washing my face in
the morning, except when I was due to have a bath anyway. Judy
probably continued to splash cold water on her face in the
mornings out of spite, pure and simple. No, some silly old tale
from a quack who dances with his dog should not be taken
seriously.

I stopped off in a petrol station to buy
some cigarettes. But before I got
back to the car I found myself sobbing uncontrollably. I
was blubbering like a child, and found it difficult to keep
my nose from running at the same time. Some people parked up
beside me stared and I tried to turn away to hide the fact I was
so upset. I coughed and coughed as though I were sick, and
pretended to spit something vile out of my mouth. I held my
face in my hands and tried to work out what had made me so
upset. Yes, I was sad that Doctor Waverly was dead, but I hadn’t
seen him for so many years.

Back in the car it came to me that what
was so upsetting was the brutal
passage of time, that thing about witnessing the end of an era,
the fact that all the dreams and plans I had as a teenager
had not been fulfilled. I was overwhelmed with memories of
Doctor Waverly and his powerful theories on how life should be
lived. One of those was about the people we live with. He told
me that 90 per cent of his mental health cases were patients
who refused or were unable to get away from the families
that were no good for them. If only people weren’t so stuck on
sticking with their useless, dysfunctional families, he would rant.

I couldn’t help but think about Judy. Why
were we sticking it out?

When I got to the church, half an hour
before the service started, no one
seemed to be able to point out any of Doctor Waverly’s close
family. There only seemed to be friends and former colleagues.
I got a blank look from one elderly woman when I explained that
I used to mow the lawns for the doctor, back when I was a
teenager. At first she took my hand, apparently to offer
comfort, but she pulled away when she realised I was not
someone more significant. She looked down at my nice black suit
and tie, as though to inquire why someone like me
would go to so much effort.

I did recognise someone in the end: another
elderly woman who organised local
performances of classical music. Mrs Diamond, the
upholder of society’s values and correct decorum. I introduced
myself, but she had no recollection of me.

I was there on the night of the fracas.

The fracas?

Doctor Waverly took me along to a concert
you organised with some young
group that played something quite modern and experimental.

Oh. I think I know what you’re referring
to. Peculiar fellow, wasn’t he?
He treated my sister, though, got her through all sorts
of crises. Credit where it’s due is what I’ve always said.

She wandered off, shaking her head.

Yes, peculiar fellow he was. Doctor
Waverly had invited me to accompany him
to one of Mrs. Diamond’s highbrow concerts in the war memorial
hall. Simple Simon needed a bit of cultural exposure,
he jested. Actually, on the way to the concert in his car,
he explained that no one else would go with him. I later
discovered why.

We sat in a row in the middle of the hall,
surrounded by people all dressed
up, many obviously keen to be seen at such a cultural event. I
spotted a couple of teachers from school and the owners of
the newsagents where I bought my comics every week. The
performance was very modern, to say the least. I’m no musician,
but it sounded like everyone was playing whatever they
wanted, randomly choosing high, screeching notes. I wondered
if any of those people holding up the violins and brass
instruments had ever had a single lesson. The title of the
piece had something to do with Hiroshima, if I remember rightly.
Everyone listened intently, with not a sound around us.
The long, quiet bits, when there were just a couple of violins
being tapped on the back with fingers, were unbearable. At the
end, though, everyone applauded loudly and enthusiastically.

Except for Doctor Waverly.

I was horrified when he stood up and
started booing. He drowned out the
clapping with long, throaty boos, making angry gestures with his
hands for the musicians to get off the stage. If I’d been
able to snake down in my seat and slip onto the floor, I would’ve
done it. Everyone seemed to be looking at me, as though I
were the crazy man’s son. My teachers looked at me and
shook their heads in disgust. Doctor Waverly was not put off.
Why are you all clapping, you dozy flock of sheep? The music
was rubbish but you’re pretending you loved it! You’re
hypocrites! You hated it, as much as my son and I did!

My son? My son? Could it have been any
worse? I wanted to die. I struggled to
breathe and folded over in my seat. I dared not look at
anyone. To my left I saw four men grabbing Waverly by the
arms, dragging him down the aisle, as he continued to scream
out about the pathetic sheep and the musicians who
should be ashamed of themselves. You’re all living a lie, was
the last phrase I heard him shout.

Afterwards, out in the lobby, I tried to
tell as many people as possible
that the crazy man was not my father and I’d just happened
to be sitting there next to him. I said this five times to the
teachers from school, but they just seemed to look at me with
wide eyes of sympathy. I called my real father and asked
him if he would quickly come and pick me up. On the way home I
vowed that I would never mow the doctor’s lawns again.

As the funeral service progressed, with
several dull hymns and
predictable prayers, I realised that no one had told any stories like
the ones I remembered. All of the tributes and anecdotes about
Waverly were extremely tame and careful, not at all close to
the truth about the man’s character and the impression he
left on people. Why were they being so dishonest? Had they
never spent any time with him? I gathered his wife had died
some time before, burying a lot of the gems about the dear but
infuriating doctor.

You’d think they were talking about a
missionary, whose life had been
nothing but meditation and purity, who had never experienced fun.
All of his out-of-the-box thinking contained. Successfully
conditioned. Perfectly rounded. Miserable in his rational, predictable
existence.

An elderly gentleman gave a long and
earnest speech about the merits of hard
work, about the need to ‘make peace with our maker’, about
the undesirability of a life led too far removed from the
church. About three quarters way through I realised that the
man had probably never met Waverly, and had probably just
turned up to the service by chance, a regular in the parish who
liked to participate in the weekly activities. Any opportunity to
repeat his convictions! People at a funeral are such a well-behaved
lot, too sober to shift in their seats and express any pang
of boredom.

Waverly was being sent off with such a
fizz that even the flowers in the tall
vases at the front seemed to be wilting before our eyes.
And who had chosen such dull colours?

When I got to my feet - and I can only say
that it was far from voluntary
- I did so with such a thrust that I almost tipped myself over
into the aisle. I caught a couple of faces, confused stares,
but nothing could stop the force that erupted from within, a
surge of something that I’d never felt before, which made me shake
and my sight become blurred.

Boo! Boo!

Were those my words?

Boo to all of this nonsense!

They all turned to stare at me, all of
those tidy, bored faces.

Shame on you! Waverly deserved better than
this. He needs to be celebrated.

I pushed away a couple of arms that
attempted to constrain me and I got
up onto the bench behind me.

Boo to all of your politeness, your
hypocrisy. You’re debasing a
genuinely good man. He would mock you if he were here.

The minister was in front of me then,
clasping my hands, his wide eyes
begging me to stop.

Boo! Boo! I gave the thumbs-down sign with
both hands.

They started a new hymn as I was pushed
off the bench and led towards the
exit. I tried to keep up the volume but a man was half covering
my mouth, telling me to shut up as he pinched the skin
around my middle. I felt no pain, though, just that strange
surge of absolute elation.

I sat in the car for a long time before I
phoned Judy. She didn’t say
anything when I told her that I was heading further down the
coast to see a man about a dog. I laughed when I said that,
remembering how Waverly used that old expression a lot,
to describe all of his unexplained absences to his wife.

But, in actual fact, I was going to see a man about a dog, a certain
collie in fact. It was the address of a breeder I’d often heard
about. Did he do collies that could dance the polka with their
masters?

Judy sighed loudly, just to let me know
she was still there. Then, when I
had nothing more to say, she asked me if I had
any idea of when she might expect me.

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I write the odd short story, the odd poem, snap the odd photograph, and tickle the odd piece of ebony and ivory. I'm also adding the odd page to a novel-in-progress, and come here every now and then for a splash of creativity in cyberspace. Feel free to click on the buttons below to read and see more. If you want to contact me, please email: thecounterpointofdreams@gmail.com

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